CHAPTER FORTY-TWO #2
I threw myself forward, my leathers creaking, and felt the sudden, jarring weight of his shadows catching me mid-air, swinging me like a pendulum toward the opposite ledge.
I landed hard, rolling to my feet as Aether cleared the gap in a single, magnificent leap, his claws digging into the stone with a shower of sparks.
Zya was already on the other side, a black blur that had seemingly teleported through the gloom.
A low, rattling hiss echoed from the ceiling.
"Serpents," I breathed, my palms igniting.
They weren't mechanical. These were flesh and bone, mutated by the Arena’s cruelty.
Dozens of them, thick as my thigh and dripping neon-green venom, began to uncoil from the rafters.
Their eyes were milky-white, sensing our heat.
"Don't let them touch you," Asher warned, his daggers appearing in his hands as if woven from the darkness itself.
"One scratch and the paralysis sets in. They'll leave you for the next team to finish off."
The drones dived low, buzzing like angry hornets, eager to catch the first drop of blood.
"Let them come," I growled.
I stepped in front of Asher, my hands circling as I pulled the heat from the very air.
"I'm tired of playing defense."
I unleashed a wave of white-hot fire, a roaring tide that hit the ceiling and washed over the nesting serpents.
The smell of burning scales and scorched stone filled the corridor, accompanied by a chorus of high-pitched shrieks. As they fell, charred and writhing, Asher moved through the smoke.
He was a symphony of slaughter.
Every time a serpent tried to strike from the shadows, a blade was already there, severing heads with surgical precision.
He moved with me, around me, our bond a humming wire of instinct. I didn't have to look;
I knew where he was. I knew when to duck so he could vault over me, and he knew when to pull his shadows back so my flames could roar.
The crowd's chant through the dome was a rhythmic thumping now. TOGETHER. TOGETHER.
Suddenly, the wall to our right groaned and slid open, revealing another corridor. But we weren't alone.
Another team—second-years from Eldrethine—stumbled out, their faces covered in soot and blood.
They saw us, saw the panthers, and for a split second, their eyes widened in pure terror.
"The Princess," one of them choked out, raising a shaking hand to conjure a shield of stone.
“Not just the Princess.” Asher’s voice came from the shadows behind me, cold enough to freeze the blood in their veins. “That’s my fucking future wife. Show some respect.”
The Gauntlet shifted again, the floor beneath all of us beginning to tilt.
"Run or fight," I challenged, my eyes burning with a fire that had nothing to do with my magic. "Decide fast."
The second-year from Eldrethine didn’t wait to decide. He roared, slamming his palms into the floor to send a ripple of jagged stone spikes toward us.
"My turn," Asher hummed.
He didn't move an inch. Instead, his shadows exploded from his back like wings, sweeping forward to swallow the stone spikes whole, crushing them into pebbles before they could even reach our boots.
The darkness didn't stop there; it snaked across the ground, wrapping around the Eldrethine wielder's ankles and hoisting him into the air.
"Wait!" his partner shrieked, a girl with Tideris silver hair, raising a wall of water to shield them.
"We don't have time for 'wait'," I snapped.
I felt the Gauntlet groan—the walls were already beginning to contract, the stone grinding together with a sound that set my teeth on edge.
"Aether! Zya!"
The panthers launched. Aether was a blur of black muscle, slamming into the water shield with enough force to shatter the girl's concentration.
Zya circled around, a black ghost in my periphery, her silver eyes flashing as her low snarl echoed off the narrowing walls.
The drones hovered closer, the crowd’s roar through the dome sounding like a heartbeat.
THUMP-THUMP. THUMP-THUMP.
“Drop them, Asher,” I commanded. “The wall is closing.”
He flicked his wrist, and the shadows slammed the Eldrethine male back into his partner.
They scrambled backward into the corridor they’d come from just as the stone slab crashed down, sealing them off.
"That was too close," I panted, the fire in my palms flickering.
The effort of the day was already starting to pull at the edges of my strength, the familiar warning heat stirring deep in my abdomen.
Asher was at my side in a heartbeat, his hand anchoring mine. The bond flared—dark, steady, and life-giving.
He didn't say a word, but his silver eyes searched mine, looking for the crack in my armor.
"I'm fine," I lied, my voice rasping.
“You’re a terrible liar, princess,” his voice purred in my mind, even as he pulled me forward. “But we’re halfway to the center. Don’t you dare go out now.”
The Gauntlet groaned, a deep, grinding sound that signaled it was losing its patience.
The walls didn’t just shift anymore; they slammed together, pulverizing the stone and any mechanical traps caught in the middle.
"Move!" Asher barked, shoving me forward as a swinging pendulum of jagged obsidian whistled through the space where my head had been a second before.
We weren't alone. The deeper we got, the more the Gauntlet became a graveyard.
We passed a corridor where a team from Eldrethine was pinned against the wall by a swarm of Chitin-Crawlers—pale, many-legged horrors with needle-teeth.
Their screams were cut short as the floor beneath them simply opened, dropping them into the dark. Their names flared red above the dome, then vanished.
"Don't look," Asher commanded, his shadows lashing out to decapitate a crawler that lunged from the ceiling.
Aether and Zya were a blur of lethal motion, their claws shredding through the monsters that poured from the cracks in the stone. But for every beast we killed, three more seemed to crawl out of the masonry. It was hectic—a frantic, suffocating rush of adrenaline and blood.
We crossed paths with a Tideris team, their leader’s face a mask of blind panic as he tried to wash away a horde of acid-spitting drakes.
They were overwhelmed in seconds, their water shields boiling under the onslaught.
By the time we reached the massive, circular chamber, my lungs were burning.
In the center, the pedestal with the pulsing red rune sat like a taunting prize. But the third-year Zephyrion squad was already there, levitating in a localized cyclone that sent lethal stone debris whistling through the air.
"The little firecracker and her shadow dog," the leader sneered, his white leathers pristine despite the carnage.
"I was hoping we'd be the ones to put you out."
The air turned freezing. Asher’s shadows boiled at his feet, rising like twin serpents. "No one calls her firecracker but me."
"Aether, Zya—take the flanks," I whispered, my voice raspy. "Asher, take the sky. I'm taking the floor."
I reached deep, past the exhaustion, past the warnings, and grabbed every ounce of magic I had left. I didn't just want to win; I wanted to end them.
“Ava, stop. You’re overdrawing,” Asher’s voice slammed into my mind, jagged with alarm.
Through the bond, I felt the panthers' distress. Aether let out a warning roar that vibrated in my marrow, Zya faltered beside me, her presence through the link flickering as I pulled too much.
They could feel it too, the familiar heat twisting deep in my abdomen, sharpening with every ounce of power I forced through my body.
I didn't listen. I couldn't.
I slammed my palms into the stone.
The fire that erupted wasn't red or gold; it was a blinding, transcendent white.
It tore through the chamber, vaporizing the Zephyrion cyclone and melting the very stone of the floor.
The third-years didn't even have time to scream before the shockwave threw them against the walls, unconscious and broken.
But the moment the light faded, the world broke with it.
My vision swam, the circular room spinning into a nauseating smear of grey. The pain didn't creep in. It struck all at once.
A sharp, agonizing cramp doubled me over, my insides feeling like they were being threaded with barbed wire.
I gasped, my knees hitting the charred stone.
Asher was there instantly, his cool shadows wrapping around me as he caught me before my face hit the ground, pulling me back against the hard planes of his chest.
“You idiot,” he hissed through the bond, though his hands were trembling as he gripped the back of my neck.
“You’re burning yourself out.”
I couldn't answer. I could only lean into him, my breath coming in shallow hitches as the dark spots in my vision grew.
Aether and Zya paced around us in a tight, protective circle, their low growls warning any remaining monsters to stay back as the drones hovered overhead.
"The rune," I managed to choke out, my hand shaking as I reached toward the pedestal. "Asher... the rune."
He didn't let go of me. He carried me the last few steps, his eyes blazing with a mix of fury and terrifying devotion. He pressed my hand onto the glowing red stone.
The world dissolved into white light, leaving the screams and the stone behind.
The white light of the exit rune spat us back onto the cool stone of the recovery bay, but the transition didn't dull the agony.
My knees hit the floor first, the impact jarring through my spine as the cramps intensified, shredding through my abdomen like hot glass.
I couldn't even draw a full breath to scream.
Asher was on me in a second, but he wasn't gentle. He grabbed my upper arms, his grip bruisingly tight as he hauled me upright, forcing me to look at him.
Gods, he was pissed.
His silver eyes weren't just molten; they were a thunderstorm.
The shadows rolling off his shoulders were jagged and violent, snapping at the air like whips.
He didn't know. He couldn't know that the white fire hadn't just drained me; it had triggered whatever the hell had been happening inside my body for years.
To him, I was just being reckless with my core, a "firecracker" throwing around too much heat for a show.